Lessons Learned
by catlapmilk
Summary: In a small, sleepy village, a girl learns all the secrets of the world. Makino-centric. Light ASL/post-Marineford spoilers.


A series of drabbles about a girl on an island, and the teachings she takes with her. Makino-centric. Hopefully everyone loves this baby girl as much as I do. Also, unfortunately, I hadn't realized this was angsty until I read it over.

Bonus points if you can squint hard enough to see a ship; I do hope you're able to figure out the identities of all of Makino's teachers.

Usual disclaimer here.

* * *

1. She's learned all there is to know about strength, albeit silent, and resolve. She often walks by his side and he is much shorter than she is, and he comments how he is getting old and he smiles with crow's feet pulling into prominence at the corners of his eyes. She replies with a soft remark about how he is still glowing with youth in the ways that count, in ways that eyes cannot see. He feigns hurt at the idea of being patronized.

They continue their peaceful walk through the little village, but it is much more, Makino realizes, for every citizen his under the most careful, critical gaze; yet there is something so undeniably caring in it. She sees that this man watches the village in a way where she thinks that nowhere is another person that could possibly find anything else more precious.

In his eyes flash, unspoken, that he is ready to fight for every little house; every man, woman, and child. She suddenly feels his strength spread through her own body, a transfer of courageous feelings.

She learns that day that when something is worth protecting, that power to raise arms will come to you unexpectedly.

Makino thinks she will be able to take on the entire world if the right people asked her to.

* * *

2. Youth is a treasure that most people would give anything for as it continues to slip from them. She is just a girl that still has very much of it left, she realizes one day. It takes her a moment, and with help.

He is a pirate who has come into her bar, but he isn't threatening her into providing service as she's used to. He's goofy and laughs with his crewmates and spins on one of the long stools. He winks at her with an eye that has scars on it. She is unimpressed and is sure her face confirms this.

Makino is returning to her place behind the counter after serving the pirates at the far corner of the room their drinks, and she notices him staring almost sadly into his half-finished mug.

"Is there a problem with it?" She asks quietly, a muted kind of fear creeping up her spine.

"You don't like me, do you?"

The question comes as a complete shock to her. "Excuse me, sir?"

"I have no trouble with getting pretty girls," he says. It's almost disgusting to her. His voice is quiet. "But you're the prettiest one yet and you don't want a thing to do with an old pirate like me."

She doesn't know how to respond. She wants to say she's sure he says that to any girl who isn't giving in to his charming routine. She almost thinks he's wrong and that he is, in fact, quite handsome. Her face flushes entirely. Instead, she replies with, "I don't think you're old at all."

Someone next to him laughs, and then another, and then the entire bar. Finally, he is laughing too, but Makino hates him and blushes harder and slams more drinks down on the counter. She has never felt more like a foolish child.

She meets his eyes and her heart pounds in her chest in a way she thinks she might really like if it didn't make her feel so immature and stupid. It is then that she realizes that perhaps, that is the way she should have been allowing herself to act all along.

She tells herself she can't wait for the awful redheaded pirate to leave, but he comes back the next night, and the next, for a while, and slowly she forgets to mind.

* * *

3. It is the awful nature of humans to take things for granted. Wisdom comes to her with big eyes and a wide smile. There is a gap in his teeth. She loves him and all his brothers the same, but she often insists he allow her to patch the holes in his high hat.

Freedom is one of those things, she realizes, when that boy is willing to wear rags and play in the dirt. Makino sees his happiness for what it truly is. Others may think he'd fallen from grace, when all he'd wanted was to break away from it.

A time comes when his wings are clipped. The two remaining brothers refuse to adapt. They hatch schemes to steal him from his home behind the high walls. Makino shushes them; tells them a boy like that would not give himself up so easily and not without good reason.

They continue to be bullheaded. Makino knows that one day he will be truly free. She thinks long and hard about her own liberty.

She patches a hole in one of the boys' shirts as they come up with their next plan to bust their brother out of his prison.

She decides that it's better if she learned to value these things a little bit more.

* * *

4. Makino has always been a firm believer in the power of love. Love conquers all; love will set you free. Love is another of these brothers, with freckles and a mean scowl. She knows his attitude isn't nearly as bad as he'd like people to believe, anymore. That, he owes to his own love.

She has never seen it in its purest form, as she is able now. She has always seen couples, fawning over one another, and the loyalty and affection one would feel for their own family, but these brothers are different. They are like little flowers that were meant to be weeds, especially the older boy with his narrowed, watchful eyes. They burst upward from under the ground, beautiful; only dark in their roots.

One day the boy approaches Makino. He is going to become a pirate, he says. He is going to see Red Hair, and he has a request.

Laughter bubbles out of her. "You want to learn to be polite?"

How precious is the elder one, with his complete and consuming devotion? His face burns with a blush, his eyes spill with fear of being found out, being judged. He threatens to seek help elsewhere, but she knows he will not make good on it. Makino slides her chin into her palm and grins.

The boy plans to leave the village. His little brother will follow after, when the world is made ready for him. Love will indeed set them free.

* * *

5. The seasons change, the current year passes away, and time stops for no one. Makino sees a woman, one who had come to the island ready to brawl and take whatever she wanted, now weathered by many years and many events. She sets her mug down and speaks in a gruff voice. There is no one in the tavern to hear them.

"I never wanted to get old." She confesses in a loud exhale, like a small burst of feelings. "Didn't like the idea of wrinkles."

Makino smiles, nods her head quietly.

"At the time, I figured that was all to it. Was never the type o' gal who'd settle down with some man and raise me some little critters." She draws her glass to her mouth again, peeks over the rim. In that moment, her eyes don't match with her tough exterior. "Don't like kids. Don't like men. After all that damn mess, still don't."

She drinks heartily, tipping the glass so the burning liquid sloshes down her throat. Makino can nearly feel the tingle in her own limbs, in her belly.

"I was supposed to run me this whole damn place. People used to really be afraid o' me, too. I had this place… I had it until that bastard showed up, threatenin' me and blackmailin' me however he liked. Dumpin' all his goddamn problems on me like I wanted to take care of 'em all."

The glass finds its way to her lips again, but her thoughts prioritize themselves higher than alcohol does in that moment.

"And look at what I got," she slurs, indignant, "I got me a man that far from loved me, only came around to wreck me with more o' the things he didn't wanna take care of. Got me two little brats that only attracted more brats an' more trouble than the lot of them was worth."

She swallows hard; harder, finally setting her drink down and shoving it away. Her voice is low. It cracks, composure heading for imminent destruction.

"But even when you don't plan for 'em, you're not supposed to end up like this. Momma's gotta die before her kids, you know? You're not supposed t – "

Makino slides around the bar, her small hands on the woman's titanic shoulders. She whispers to her, shushes her quietly. She can feel her own face getting wet, her own heart being pulled at by cruel phantom hands. It feels like a bad idea to tell her not to cry, so she doesn't. She simply rubs at this woman's back until her voice returns.

She looks up at Makino with cheerless eyes, with a watery smile.

"Aging ain't graceful at all, but turns out e're a lot worse things than wrinkles."

Makino agrees.

* * *

6. She doesn't remember if she was in the bar or out on a walk when it happens. All Makino can remember in that moment is her own heart bursting, singing in high, operatic notes of joy. Her entire body hums and she, like everyone else in tiny Fuusha Village, radiates with insurmountable happiness.

There is a boy on the cover of a newspaper. His head is lowered in respect, his body broken from the wounds of a great war. Makino cannot see his eyes but she sees a scar, one that he'd gotten a long time ago; a bullheaded pirate in the making proving himself to an equally bullheaded pirate legend.

Makino feels like it's both been too long and not long enough since she was mending the holes in his shirts and listening to him speak excitedly about how he was going to have his brother back, how he would become a captain of a strong crew; later, how he would even become Pirate King.

His ambition had always been so radiant. It's enough to make everyone glow as well.

They cheer, head down to her bar to celebrate the snot-nosed pirate boy turning the world upside-down. They litter the bar with headlines, drink until they can't anymore. Someone speaks about how they are the proudest little village in the world… the home of, soon, the man who will rule the seas.

Makino smiles, tears in her eyes. Someone gathers a bundle of papers, stuffs them under their arm and stumbles out; mumbles something about another ungrateful brat who is waiting to hear the news.

Spirits burn bright in her belly.

Perhaps she isn't suited to be Pirate King, Makino thinks, but there are plenty of other things she could be, especially when she has learned all the secrets of the world over the years. Her teachers may have been the most unlikely people, but their lessons have been the most valuable ones she's ever learned.

That night she laughs, arms wrapped around her entire village. She thinks about a red-haired man with a goofy grin, and a dirty-faced child with a gap in his teeth, and another with raw knuckles and freckled skin, and finally the boy in the paper, with the scar on his heart and his eye. Makino takes a seat next to a short man with glasses and kind eyes, and a big woman with an explosive temper, and they all smile until their cheeks hurt.

She isn't quite sure if there is anyone else in all four seas who could have taught her better.


End file.
